After planting his castle on what might have been the resident sacred patch of land, a knight is facing wave after wave of orcs keen to remove him from the local scenery in Ninja Kiwi's interesting defense/hack-and-slash twist Knight Elite.

Knights clearly should not be architects, not even defense-minded ones, because the first rule of a good fortress is not to give it more entrances than a mouse mansion made out of Swiss cheese. But unfortunately this knight is already past that point. Perhaps it is not his fault (maybe he inherited the place), but it is clearly now his problem and with angry barbarians beating down his homestead's six entrances, he's going to have his hands full. Good thing, then, that as any progressive monarch he has forgone the use of his serfs and instead bought a Soldier Of Fortune subscription to get a few mercenaries.

Move with [WASD] and attack with the left mouse button. Tapping [Q] or [E] will swap your ranged attack to your melee and vice-versa, while [ESC] or the [spacebar] pauses the game. Keep an eye on your surroundings, since enemies will attack not only you but your structures; if a barricade gets damaged, hurry over to it and hit [F] to repair. Have soldiers on call? Use [G] to order them to regroup.

Knight Elite is a barricade game, where you have to survive successive waves of monsters (fifty in total), bolstering your odds with better weapons, stronger fortifications and troops who fight with you. There is a touch of RPG stats that you can access as your knight levels up, opening up choices that can improve attacks, make units cheaper and so on. The aforementioned units are soldiers, archers, knights, wizards and a mean machine that looks like an aggrieved sawmill; these are trained as you upgrade your castle using loot gathered from fallen monsters and your own mine.

Got all that? Good, because the enemy is hammering on your six doors and it is time to defend yourself!

Analysis: In general, bringing so many different elements under one besieged roof is a risky gamble, and in many cases it does not pay off. By failing to keep it simple, gameplay can become convoluted and stuff stops being fun. But Knight Elite, bar a few quirks and missteps, pulls off its concoction pretty well.

The only character you can control is the knight, though you can call on your men to return to the center of the castle. As the lord of the manor, you stroll around fixing barricades, ordering improvements from the game menu and playing a starring role in slapping the barbaric orcs back to their "won't bathe twice a year" lack of civilization. You do this very well: being the man in charge you have access to weapon and skill upgrades that soon turns you into a cleaver of low-powered hordes and the only hope your men has against a surplus of lumbering trolls (especially the armored variety). Theoretically you could play the entire game purely going this route: hog all the upgrades and get all the weapons for yourself, building castle upgrades purely to access your entire arsenal. The hordes cannot actually destroy anything other than the barricades and the only way to lose is to die.

But no knight is an island, so you can train a few loyal soldiers to keep the bad guys entertained while you tour the barricades. Soldiers and archers are cheap and can be churned out like rabbits on Easter, knights are costlier but worth their weight in plate armor, wizards keep a distance and inflict a lot of ranged damage while Shredders do exactly what it says on the tin (but sadly looks nothing like a Foot Clan leader). You access these through building upgrades - the latter also provides better walls, magic potions and mine improvements.

Elite Knight is very ambitious for a Flash game, so it does bulge at the seams a bit. The engine's performance is choppy on some of the machines tried - you will probably need a reasonably strong machine and a browser so clear it can see the Spanish fleet. Simply put, the game engine can use some tweaking. Likewise your units are not particularly useful other than for keeping the monsters off your back. They do their share of killing, but there are no defensive moves or allocations. You simply take advantage of the fact that there is an armed mob in your courtyard.

All that said, Knight Elite is fun, and I am not a big fan of barricade-style games. The extra diversity that comes with the RPG and Building elements are very satisfying, not to mention the satisfaction of cleaving lowly orcs out of the way as if you were making space for a hedge. With some polish and tweaks this could be a real classic.

I don't like how the ninja kiwi intro page stays up for so long. Also, there is a "Play Now" button that takes you to their web-page. There should at least be a message saying "Your game will start in a moment" or something. Otherwise it seems like the "Play Now" should take me to the game I'm trying to play. :(

It seems as if micro-transactions are the way things are going now... I deplore this tactic. Deplore, I say! I remember back in my day cheat codes were free... provided you had a subscription to Nintendo Power or felt like calling the 900 number for automated tips.

Yes, that was back in the day when games were not free and the developers didn't have to worry about being paid for their work. Flash game developers of today have to be creative to monetize their development efforts.

I'm not a fan of microtransactions myself, but if the items that are available to buy are not essential to the gameplay or don't make me feel like unless I buy something I can't experience the full game, then I'm ok with it.

[edit] On the other hand, the "only saves every five waves" thing was a bad move. Every time I died, I had to scour my inventory to see what went missing, which parts of the tech-tree I needed to re-buy, etc. That sort of thing is just annoying. And confusing, since it appears that levels are saved separately? Once, I died after recently leveling but right before a fifth wave, and it kept the level but I lost everything I gathered up in the previous four waves. Such a nuisance.

A fairly fun game, but it seems like most of the mercenaries are pretty useless. I was kinda expecting the archers to stand at the gates and fire arrows over the baracades, not, you know, stand in the middle of the castle and wait for the baddies to break in.

I think there should deffinately be a sequel, which should include different modes such as: Timed mode (Kill as many enemies as possible in the time limit), Survival mode (Classic Game), and possibly a Co-op mode (Play with a friend on a larger map). All together the game is nicely done, though as said before, repetitive.

OK, I've pretty much played all the different paths available here, and I'll say that the one path that's pretty much screwed is the "archery" path. The default bow is pretty pathetic, the speed-assisted bow is very expensive (as in, you can't afford it until you're facing things that are very hard to kill with it), and the combat buffs (like cleave and improved critical) don't seem to work on arrows.

This means that the long sword and the maul are really the two best paths. Then your choice is basically two paths, you either scrape by until you can afford the best weapon for your specialty, or you get the crystal mine ASAP so you can buy as many shredders as possible.

Interesting game but HORRIBLE controls...
The weapon changing should be made on wheel scroll and there should be a way to read the instructions when you are already in the game... Those two killed me several times (well the lack of instructions just once)

Great game, BUT the lack of saving after every round doesn't make the game better in any single way, it only awakens rage in the player's mind. Also the game gets VERY laggy when encountering waves with huge amounts of orcs (like 40-50). I have never gotten to wave 50 myself, best being like 47 because of save bug(Got to wave 21 and went to sleep. On the next morning I loaded and I was at wave 21. Then I played till like 47 and accidentaly closed the game. When I restarted the game, my save was gone.) and dieing due to bugs(an orc hit me right after I had hit him with my longsword, which wasn't possible until that). If these problems would be fixed it would be a VERY GOOD game.

I love the comtrols, but I was genuinely surprised that there ws no free play mode. That means you have 2 possible play styles:
1. Play normally and win easily
2. Play to gat the Orcbane by buying ONLY the necesary stuff, and still fail to get enough gold by the time the game ends.

Another thing: The # of enemies. I would rather fight 10 of the boss at once than 50000000000000000 of the giant orcs, which is what happens, causing the game to lag and not respond to ANYTHING.

The crossbow is actually among the best weapons... because the reload mechanism is broken. As with many games, switching weapons automatically reloads your projectile weapon. Thus, E, E, click allows you to fire the crossbow about 2x the speed as the fast bow. The fast bow is still worth it for the extra damage.

An annoying graphical glitch is that it usually doesn't display the correct weapon when you make a weapon switch, though it operates correctly.

The AI for the ranged mercs really suck -> mages (though with good damage) are not worth the crystals at all. Herp my buddy is getting pounded 3 feet away, but I'm going to sit here and stare at a wall.

Does the sword/crossbow/etc mastery actually give you more damage? I can't seem to tell the difference.

Anyone have the time to try what ELITE does? lol

@Shade

That final boss pwns. He munched through ~30-40 knights, 4 shredders, ~20 archers, and a mage. I had to run around crossbow spamming for 3 more minutes before he finally died. Ugh

As far as I can tell, the only difference between normal and elite modes is the HP and damage of the enemies. There is not a difference in the amount of money or exp.There may or may not be a difference in the ending. But I can only get to wave 30 something before the 500000000000 enemies at once thing happens and I get pwned.

I use no support at all because of the AI. I was finally able to buy Shredders, and they slooooowly took out the tiny, wak orcs first while they are being destroyed by orc knights.

Also, the armor doesn't make sense. If I buy armor with 82% protection, and the armor expertise skill (20% more protection) shouldn't that mean I have 102% protection, making me invulnerable? But no, a few bombers are enough to kill me still.

Tips:

1. You can choose between Orcbane or everything else. There are not enough waves to buy orcbane and even just a few other things.

2. Don't worry about using too many potions, but don't waste them.

3. If you have the max walls and the spikes, you can just fix the walls and they will take care of all but the giant orcs.

4. DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON TROOPS

@4tran

Really? I used the executioner's sword and defeared him easily. Since the attacks are interrupted when attacked, only about one in ten of his attacks atcually worked

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